


Coming Out is Hard When Your Girlfriend is Lun

by Team_Two_Cats



Series: Silly (Suikoden) Love Songs [1]
Category: Suikoden, Suikoden V
Genre: Coming Out, F/M, LGBTQ Themes, Trans Male Character
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-06-22
Updated: 2019-06-22
Packaged: 2020-05-16 05:08:24
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 998
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19311250
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Team_Two_Cats/pseuds/Team_Two_Cats
Summary: Subala has been away for a long time figuring himself out, and when he returns it's to a world at war. When he accepts the prince's invitation to join his army, it's mainly because his girlfriend, Lun, is already there, and there's something he needs to tell her...





	Coming Out is Hard When Your Girlfriend is Lun

**Author's Note:**

> Takes place just after Subala's recruitment, after the prince obtains/discovers the castle in Ceras Lake.

The night is calm, the waters of Ceras Lake lapping gently at the hull, rocking the ship in sweet embrace. Subala sits, back to the railing, eyes cast up at the stars as if looking for a place to drop a lure.

From their room below, Lun appears, holding a bottle of something clear, which she hands over as she sits down next to Subala. A swig reveals it to be gin, probably somehow smuggled all the way from Tinto.

“How yer pop get his hands on this?”

Lun chuckles. “You know him,” she says. “Same ol’ pop.”

Meaning he probably fished it out of the ocean and didn’t realize how valuable it was. Subala wants to take the time to rib her a bit about it, but the words won’t rise. There’s something in the way, a lump in his throat that hasn’t left since the prince recruited him. A lump at the heart of why he’d been away so long. From Raftfleet. From Lun. The silence stretches between them and he tries to get it up.

“So…you know why the prince asked if I was yer boyfriend?”

Lun laughs a little louder this time, and it’s like a spear shoved through his heart.

“I know, couldn’t he _tell_? Yer my _girl_ friend!”

She laughs again and reaches for the bottle but Subala quickly takes another long swig, tipping it all the way back, draining it.

“Hey, I was—“

“But what if I… _was_ yer boyfriend?” Subala asks, cutting off the objection.

Lun squints, eyes moving between his face and the bottle as if the booze did something to make the sentence confusing. And it’s like all the times he’s imagined this, all the times he’s put it off and agonized about what to say and how to—

“But wait no I’m confused,” she says. “How would that work, on account of we’re both—“

Subala puts the bottle down harder than he wants, is startled by the heavy thud. He looks out at the lake, up at the castle, higher still at the stars. Anywhere but at Lun’s face and her questions, which of course only makes her speak faster, more frenziedly.

“Wait, are you saying that we shouldn’t be together? That you have a boyfriend? Or that you want one? Or that I want one? Or wait, are you—“

“Oh Feitas, shut yer yap!” The words come out hotter than he wants and Lun stills, her expression suddenly fragile. It’s so close to hurt that he almost stops, tells her that it’s nothing, that they can talk about it later. But he can’t. Won’t. He _needs_ to say this. “What I’m _tryin’_ to say is… What. If. I…am a boy?”

Given voice, the words seem to float in the air, to cruise the distance between him and her that feels suddenly wider than the sea. And then they arrive at Port Lun, and her mouth drops open as if to receive them.

Lun claps her hands, and the sudden noise makes Subala jump.

“Then you know what this means?” Lun’s eyes are saucer’s big.

Subala cringes. Dozens of possible things rush through his head. That Lun is breaking up with him, that she can’t handle this, that she’s going to insist that she only likes girls or doesn’t think Subala’s “thought about this enough.” Every doubt and fear nips up and he feels tears tugging at the corners of his eyes that he won’t cry, not yet, not in front of her.

“What?” he asks.

“It means I have to tell the prince I was wrong! You _are_ my boyfriend!” Lun stands abruptly, turning toward the dock in a dash.

It takes Subala a moment to realize what’s happened, at which point it’s almost too late to stop her from running out off the boat.

“Oh fer cryin’ out loud,” he says, and scoops up his trident, loosing it in a fluid throw so that it embeds in the wood of the railing just ahead of Lun, stopping her escape. “If I wanted to broadcast it all about the castle, dontcha think I’d have done it already, ya dummy?!”

Lun turns to him, a grin splitting her face. “Got ya,” she says, and Subala feels his entire body flush, from his toes to his face. Not from embarrassment, as he might have feared. From something warmer.

“Dummy,” he mutters, thumbing his nose and stretching his arm like hurling a trident across the ship was just an elaborate…training…exercise?

Lun takes her time walking back, hands behind her back, the picture of innocence. She stops in front of Subala and slips her arms over his shoulders, hands playing with the short hairs on the back of his neck.

“Thanks fer tellin’ me,” she says.

Somehow, Subala flushes a deeper red. It feels like he shaking, like all the fear he’s held the past months are slipping free, radiating from him and dissipating into the cool night air.

“Well if I waited fer you to figure it out, I’d be an old man before…” He stops, in part because it’s not at all what he wanted to say and in part because Lun’s smile never slips, though she does roll her eyes.

“I mean…” he says. “I mean…thanks. For hearing me.”

A mischievous glint enters Lun’s eyes, and Subala feels his body heat for an entirely different reason.

“Now, how about me and my boyfriend get below deck and see if we can’t still make the ol’ ship rock and roll?”

And it’s like a dam bursts, all the uncertainty gone, the fear that this would change them, that Lun wouldn’t…but she’s here, in front of him, and he sees his girlfriend and her dopey grin and her stupid hat and doesn’t stop himself from leaning forward into a kiss that’s not at all as awkward as he had feared. And if a tear or two fall then, only the stars see them.

**Author's Note:**

> This is all I could think about when the dialogue option was there upon meeting Subala the first time, and I refuse to alter my headcanon, regardless of how cringey Lun's response is. I love Subala so much and they make a great couple! <3


End file.
